Galizien German Descendants
About:
This website is an extension of the Galizien German Descendants Publication, and was formerly found at the Federation of East European Family History Societies at https://feefhs.org/region/galicia.
Beginning in 1774 the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire issued Settlement Charters which invited ‘foreign’ settlers into its newly acquired province of Galicia (‘Galizien’ in German). German settlers attracted by offers of transportation and special status emigrated from Germany to Galicia. The ‘Galizien German Descendants’ publication is dedicated to family history research of these German settlers and their descendants. If anyone is interested in any of the articles from our publication or the entire publication, contact Betty Wray at her address below.
GGD was founded by Betty Wray and Evelyn Wolfer in 1995
Contact Information:
- Website: www.galiziengermandescendants.org/cms/index.php/en/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/4810727069/?fref=nf (not officially sanctioned)
- Email: ggd@galiziengermandescendents.com
Contact language: German, English
Type:
Geenalogical resource and research society
Purpose:
To provide access to GGD funded research with hundreds of church records, trip reports, family trees for those who agreed to share them with fellow members, and books about Galicia, often with English translations
Membership:
Costs vary by location and newsletter options. All options are in USD funds payable via PayPal (which accepts credit cards and some debit cards).
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For those anywhere in the world who accept email notifications and download their own newsletters from the GGD website, the cost will be $5.50 USD per calendar year; $10.70 USD for 2 calendar years, and $16.00 for 3 calendar years..
- For those with USA or Canadian addresses who wish to receive printed newsletters by postal mailing, the annual cost will be $31.50 USD for the USA and $36.70 USD for Canada.
Membership Benefits:
All memberships include access to the Members Only portions of our website for the calendar year when you start your membership. This includes access to GGD funded research with hundreds of church records, trip reports, family trees for those who agreed to share them with fellow members, and books about Galicia, often with English translations, that are only available to members.
Membership includes access to the list of all other members and non-member submitters sorted by the village and surname they are researching. This allows you to contact them to share information about that village or surname if the member has agreed to make their contact information available (over 95% of our members have done so).
One of the best benefits of membership is access to an electronic copy (pdf) of our quarterly newsletter for the current year and for the previous year (8 newsletters all together). Our membership is based on the calendar year. This is true even if you join in late December. Your new membership only lasts until Dec 31, but you will have access to the 8 newsletters during those days or weeks. If you wish to view the January newsletter, you will need to pay for the next year.
Books
There is a list of books available specifically to members.
Trip Reports
There are also tripreports from our members with pictures and text describing their trip and what they learned.
Galizien German Genealogy Facebook group
Members or anyone interested in the German side of Galicia, please note that the Facebook page is not part of GGD and the content is not authorized or reviewed by GGD. However, it does allow both members and non-members to discuss topics of interest to Galician descendants. It is a moderated group and you must request to join, but there is no fee and there is much discussion with practical advice to people asking for help and other discussion letting us know about new resources.
Access to the Galizien German Descendants Genealogy Database
The Galizien German Descendants genealogy database has been created by combining the genealogy research submitted by many individuals whose German ancestors migrated to Galizien beginning in the early 1700s and whose descendants subsequently migrated to many other parts of the world, including back to Germany. To this, we added the 64,000 people from the resettlement database. The GGD Genealogy Database, which is only available to GGD members, allows members to search for names, villages and locations and then to see the matching results from all family trees submitted by GGD genealogy researchers and members. This allows researchers to better identify data matches or data errors compared to their own data.
The database is only available to members and requires the use of a separate password 
.
GGD Funded and Member Research
Note, many of the actual records are locked and can only be seen by members.
Zeitweiser Index
The Zeitweiser was created by the “Bund der Christlichen Deutschen in Galizien”—“Association of Christian Germans in Galizien” which was founded by Pastor Theodor Zoeckler in 1907. It was disbanded by the then current authorities in 1923.